Korea Journal, vol. 60, no. 1 (spring 2020): 17–39. doi: 10.25024/kj.2020.60.1.17 © The Academy of Korean Studies, 2020 Ssen-Unni in K-Pop: The Makings of “Strong Sisters” in South Korea Jieun LEE and Hyangsoon YI Abstract From the highest points of Psy’s and BTS’s popularity, K-pop fans worldwide have continued to experience the Korean Wave through different media, contexts, and perspectives. In search of the intersections between the Hallyu phenomenon and femininity, this article investigates K-pop women singers’ media presentations and performances that are critical in understanding women’s positionality in contemporary South Korea. In this paper, we will focus particularly on the recent configuration ofssen- unni (strong sister) that evokes a feeling of empowerment in young women K-pop fans. Examining how the diverse and often contradictory messages of women’s liberation and freedom have been produced, disseminated, and consumed, using the strong femininity implied by the notion of ssen-unni before and after Hallyu, we argue that the contemporary representations of femininity by women artists in the K-pop world reveal not only limitations, but also potentials in the changing cultural topography of Korean society. Keywords: K-pop, ssen-unni, Hallyu, Korean Wave, femininity, performance, Korean women singers Jieun LEE is assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Wake Forest University. E-mail: [email protected]. Hyangsoon YI is professor of comparative literature at the University of Georgia. E-mail: [email protected]. 18 KOREA JOURNAL / SPRING 2020 Introduction In 2018, the all-female K-pop group BLACKPINK released their music video titled “DDU-DU DDU-DU” in which all four members (Jennie, Jisoo, Rosé, and Lisa) performed their own individual segments and also as a group. This music video broke the prevalent innocent girl group image, replacing it with that of a more in-your-face performance. The first scene of the music video instantly sets the group’s rebellious tone through Jennie’s opening lyrics: “I may look sweet, but I don’t act like it/My slender figure hides twice the volume/I give it to them straight Don’t care what people think/Black to the Pink We’re pretty and savage.”1 The dominantly black and dark blue hues of the visuals of the video reinforce the idea of a tough woman with a serious aspect, with the sets accentuating sharp angles and the main platform being made of solid gray stone akin to inverted steps. Performing within this jagged space are the four women. With “DDU-DU DDU-DU,” BLACKPINK confirmed their popularity which they had enjoyed as the first all-female K-pop band to reach the 55th spot on the Billboard Hot 100 June 30 chart (Zellner 2018). With this important landmark in K-pop history, BLACKPINK foregrounds the strong female image as their trademark.2 This image, termed “ssen-unni”3 (strong sister) in the entertainment industry, is now widely circulated in Korean popular culture at large. Yet, before BLACKPINK’s accomplishment, solo female artists such as Lee Sangeun and Kim Wan-sun in the late 1980s, Uhm Jung-hwa in the 1990s, BoA and Lee Hyori in the 2000s, and Jessi from the 2010s to the present had already paved the way, marking an important change 1. BLACKPINK Official YouTube Channel “DDU-DU DDU-DU.” 2. BLACKPINK’s huge success engendered a 2019 global tour “aiming to take the West by storm” (Ramirez 2019), an indication of female K-pop groups’ strong worldwide appeal, with such artists as Red Velvet performing in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and even North Korea (Benjamin 2018) and more recently, the group TWICE, whose album Fancy You debuted in fourth place on Billboard’s World Albums chart (Benjamin 2019). 3. This term should be transcribed into either “ssen eonni” (Ministry of Culture system) or “ssen ŏnni” (McCune-Reischauer system) according to the scholarly conventions within Korean Studies. In popular media, however, “ssen-unni” is extensively used, and we adopt this transcription throughout this article. Ssen-Unni in K-Pop: The Makings of “Strong Sisters” in South Korea 19 in direction for all-female K-pop groups and solo artists by embodying the concept of ssen-unni that has recently gained popularity with K-pop fans. Messages of women’s empowerment have thus been produced by women performers in South Korea (hereafter Korea) from the beginning of Hallyu, but more prominently in the current wave of K-pop music.4 But ssen-unni in K-pop is in and of itself a performative embodiment of contradictory elements. It is our contention that women K-pop performers are showing a strong female image through their music videos and stage performances as a way of fighting the sexist and normalized idea of a weak femininity that inscribes women as docile and innocent. In the process of engendering this strong femininity, however, these performances actually insinuate the underlying message that power is derived from what society views as masculine, reaffirming patriarchal and hierarchical perceptions. This conflicted notion of ssen-unni utilizes images of women physically overpowering men or imitating hypermasculine mannerisms, wearing male- identified clothing, and using objects such as baseball bats and machine guns, all symbols of masculinity (Kline 1972, 280; Accad 1991, 245) with guns especially “associated with hierarchical social roles (father, protector) and with […] values such as patriarchy” (Chauvin 2018, 45). If the only way to turn the tables on a male-dominated society is by appropriating toxic masculine symbols, the message is bound to be skin-deep and lose its ssen-unni appeal. Consequently, hypermasculinity and gender hierarchy in female K-pop music videos are likely to undermine the potential socio- cultural impact of ssen-unni on empowering a new generation of young women, thereby failing to address the chronic problem to which they attempt to demonstrate resistance, that of patriarchy in the real world. Yet, from a Western feminist perspective, one could think of the current ssen-unni phenomenon in light of third-wave feminism.5 Defying the 4. The term “Hallyu” was coined in 1999 by the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism in an effort to improve Korean-Chinese public relations through the use of Korean popular music. The Ministry produced a music CD titledHallyu —Song from Korea (Hánliú in Chinese), 韓流 and the term “Hallyu” became widely popular as “Chinese newspapers represented the success of Korean singers in China as hallyu” (Jin and Yoon 2017, 2244). 5. The periodization of waves of feminism is derived from the American feminist movement. 20 KOREA JOURNAL / SPRING 2020 categorical and essentialist views in the way that women and men reveal their feminist ideologies, third-wave feminists envision multiplicity and ambiguity, claiming that diverse aspects of female expression should be embraced in their theorizing endeavors (Walker 1995). Moreover, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards (2004, 60–61) note how “prizing, acknowledging, or valuing the ‘feminine’—be it the domestic sphere, being a mom, or a talent for adornment—is within the scope of feminist history and future” and how “using makeup isn’t a sign of our sway to the marketplace and the male gaze; it can be sexy, campy, ironic, or simply decorating ourselves without the loaded issues.” Indeed, the performances of ssen-unni could be understood as a possible dialogue with these feminist thoughts of espousing the heterogeneous ways in which femininity can be embodied in Korea. All in all, the prevalence of this concept in the K-pop world is indicative of a great complexity in the way in which young generations of Korean women navigate the conventional mold of womanhood that perpetuates characteristics of silence, demureness, submissiveness, and dependency. It is highly conceivable that ssen-unni might serve as an effective force for bringing various women’s issues to light such as prevalent marital and relationship abuse and sexual violence (Chung and Ok 2014, 81–92) among others. In this sense, the image of ssen-unni can potentially participate in changing the landscape of what it means to be a woman in contemporary Korea. If this is the direction in which the concept is evolving, its seemingly contradictory messages on gender dynamics need to be thoroughly examined. First-wave feminists predominantly focused on female suffrage, whereas the goal of second- wave feminists was to achieve social change for equal rights in terms of jobs, education, and reproductive rights (Dicker 2008, 103). Third-wave feminism, which began to appear in the United States in the mid-1980s, embraced “pluralistic thinking within feminism…[working] to undermine narrow visions of feminism and their consequent confinements, through in large part the significantly more prominent voice of women of color and global feminism” (Kinser 2004, 130, 133). It is important to note that this periodization is arbitrary not fully addressing concerns in between the waves and leaving out the many different voices of women of color in and out of the U.S. Above all, this periodization is hardly applicable to contextualize the experiences of women and the emergence of feminism in the history of Korea. Ssen-Unni in K-Pop: The Makings of “Strong Sisters” in South Korea 21 Korean “Strong Sisters”: Contextualizing Ssen-Unni in Changing Korean Society The term “unni” literally translates as “older sister,” a female family member or person who must be respected within the Korean kinship hierarchy and societal age structure. In the context of Korean feminist practices, the use of the word unni has become an exercise to actualize feminist ideology. For example, members of the feminist activist group, UNNInetwork, founded in 2004, use the appellation unni among themselves not only as a way of expressing their mutual familiarity and ease, but also to show their sisterhood.